Effect of Packet Inter-arrival Time on the Energy Consumption of Beacon Enabled MAC Protocol for Body Area Networks

One of the major concerns for the development of Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) is to increase the network lifetime. IEEE 802.15.4 standard for Medium Access Control (MAC) layer can be used for energy efficient and reliable transmission by modifying the different control parameters. Such a modification is very difficult, because an accurate model for the influence of these control parameters of minimum energy and delay is not available. Moreover, there is no mechanism available how to adopt and implement these parameters that can implement on the Body Nodes (BNs). In this paper, we provide the mechanism for emergency data along with normal and periodic data by modifying the superframe structure. Coordinator transmits and extra beacon upon the request of emergency data. A comprehensive analysis of energy consumption of BNs including the affect of packet inter-arrival time is given in this paper. Analysis show that, Contention Access Period (CAP) of superframe is not feasible for emergency data due to its extra delay and energy.